Miles Dieffenbach: Inside Carnegie Mellon’s $4BN Endowment & The Math Behind DPI, TVPI, Illiquidity

So my message here to all venture capitalists, now is the time. Please, take your companies public. I breathe investing. These business models these GPs are creating are some of the best high-margin businesses ever created. My question to any new allocator or an investor is, do you think you're going to have access to top decile managers? Because at that point, top decile, you are achieving returns above the PME consistently. But below that, even top quartile, you're not.

Ready to go? (instrumental music plays) Myles, dude, I'm so excited for this. Listen, we've been friends for a while. I'm so excited that we could also make it happen in person. What no one knows is I dragged you round London for a walk last night and it poured with rain. You were so patient and great, but thank you for joining me, man.

Thank you for having me. It's a, uh, pleasure to be here, uh, you've had some incredible, uh, guests on, on the podcast and I'm honored to be one of them.

You know what, dude, it's, it's amazing given the fact that I've known you for a while and then also, like, in the research for this, learning more and more about you, because I didn't actually realize this but at 26, you, uh, kind of went through a cancer experience and, you know, you're a cancer survivor now. Pretty unbearable to think about given the fact that I'm 29, like just the most incredible strength. How did having cancer and facing your own mortality change your mindset? And I've never asked that question to start a show before. (laughs)

Well, let's dive into it. We'll dive into the, into the heavy and hot. I mean, it's a surreal moment when that happens, you know, I think everyone at that age thinks you're invincible. I did, right, uh, and you get that news and you're in a bit of shock, right? And it was, it was so abnormal to me when they told me I had lymphoma. I said, "Oh great, what's lymphoma?" I thought it was like a, a cold. I didn't even know what it was. And they said it's, uh, it's, it's cancer and it's progressed, you know, quite substantially and, and we need to, you know, start a chemo process here within the week. Um, and so like I'd say most all people I, I sulked for about 12 hours, went home, uh, was, was mad at the world, didn't wanna speak to anybody. Why me? Um, and, and I woke up that next morning and one of my college football coaches had a, had a great quote that, that really stuck with me which was, you know, "Success in life is, you know, 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react when it happens to you." And so, uh, you know, I took that running that next day, I said, "I'm gonna attack this. I can't change the situation I'm in, but I can change, you know, how I react to it moving forward." And so I basically said, you know, "Cancer can't kill me if I don't stop moving," so I basically started, you know, the, uh, a pretty insane regiment of, of workouts, uh, and when I would go in and get my chemo, uh, that was like my RnR, that was my recovery period. I'd get out, I'd, I'd, I'd start that again and flash forward four months, I was, uh, cancer-free and have been so ever since.